


affliction

by sunflowerbright



Category: Dragon Age - All Media Types, Dragon Age: Inquisition
Genre: Canon-Typical Violence, Gen, character piece, introspective
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-09-27
Updated: 2015-09-27
Packaged: 2018-04-23 15:37:21
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,190
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4882327
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sunflowerbright/pseuds/sunflowerbright
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>There's a trick to it - you don't show the hurt.</p>
<p>Short character-piece focusing on the Iron Bull, and his various injuries.</p>
            </blockquote>





	affliction

**Author's Note:**

> For the lovely Jay

 

 

There’s a trick to it – you don’t show the hurt. Mornings are the worst, at least mornings when he has actually been sleeping and his body has laid down, on the ground or in a bed not quite large enough for his wide frame, and he wakes up stiff and sore, and his knee _aches._ That word had been invented specifically so that he could one day use it to describe his fucking knee.

The injury is so old now, the pain so familiar that it is easy to go through the motions. It is only if he stops and thinks about it, crouching on the ground with one leg stretched in front of him, or sitting on the edge of a thin mattress, arms resting on his thighs, that it becomes really painful. If it has been particularly cold, or hell, even particularly warm, it is even worse, the entire leg so stiff he’s sure it’ll never bend again, or the skin prickly and red, overheated and groaning in protest. It takes him several moments then, to compose himself, go past the hurt. It becomes easier with time, though on could argue that it has always been _easy._ It’s easier than fighting five armed men at once, when his own halberd has a broken handle and three of his fingers just go cut in half, to go with it. It’s easier than right after the injury had settled, when his leg was so bad he could not even walk on it. And so standing up, even though his knee is screaming for him not to, pleading against the pressure it will need to hold, is _easy._ It is an old injury, and he has had plenty of time to convince himself of this. A dull ache is like an old friend, and it is far better than the alternative, which is no pain, but no anything else either.

He makes sure that no-one sees this, and if they do, he will smirk and say ‘ah, just a bad day. We all get those.’ They do not need to know that it happens every day. That it happens every morning if he has been asleep. That it happens every afternoon if he hasn’t, and sometimes, oh sometimes, it is in the evening that it is the worst, like needles being slowly pushed into his skin, drilling into the bone, and he will raise his tankard high at the tavern and bellow the loudest, so that no-one hears the slow eroding of his muscles.

The eye is better, at least after a few weeks have passed and it has healed up nicely. Sometimes, in the fighting, dirt or blood will slip in there, and the mooks they’re fighting always, always try to go for it, and a few get a good shot in. There is nothing quite like the pain of a solid punch to the marred remains of what used to be his eye, and whoever did it usually doesn’t last long. He reacts to pain, like any person, any animal, would do, cower or counter-strike, and he has never been much about the cowering. He cleaved one bastard’s face clean off, the whole left side of his own face still singing from the punch. After the fighting, when he had been alone, he had taken off the eyepatch slowly, gingerly, and simply sat for a while until the throbbing pain died down.

He hates having the eyepatch off. He knows the scar isn’t a pretty sight, it makes people recoil faster than his heavy bulk or the great-axe on his back. Somehow, facial scars are always the worst, and people can get so squeamish about eye-stuff, as if it is the worst place a man can get injured. After the fact, when the little Vint had gone to the Fade, had stopped looking at Bull as if he’d skewer him at any second, he’d found a room at the inn with a mirror and set to clean it up properly. There had been a lot of blood – more than seemed likely, but it hadn’t worried him. He was used to bleeding. After, he had made it a point to look at it until he got used to the sight, only one good eye left to inspect the swollen, jagged flesh where the other one had been.

So no, it doesn’t hurt, and when it does, it is never enough to bother him. He does not let it show, because he knows there are others it would bother, his Chargers, his _men,_ and really, there’s no reason for that. No need for it. Pain is just another tool, and the Ben-Hassrath use whatever tool is necessary, whatever tool is available. He still remembers, Krem’s pale face and the horror in his eyes when he saw the blood, and he still remembers stepping in front of Gat to take a blow that would have severed his thigh, only to take it on the knee, and he still remembers grasping the halberd, the clean slice that cut it through and took parts of his fingers with him. He’d shrugged and severed the guy, his head falling from his body to join Bull’s fingers on the ground.

_“Doesn’t it hurt?”_ Krem, Gat, the attacker, Skinner, the Inquisitor all ask him. Dorian chimes in too, concern in his voice, and Varric sounds like he’s laughing when he speaks, but Varric is always laughing, even when he’s not, so it’s nothing new. _Doesn’t it hurt? Isn’t it painful?_

“Could be worse,” he says or. “Pain passes.” Or. “It’s just a scratch, don’t worry.” _I can take it._ Truth is, he likes letting his opponents hit him – not to the point of foolishness, not because he has a complete lack of care for his own well-being (there was a time, but its over now, Seheron far away and out of his reach, and that’s _for the best_ ), but because a hit landed on him means one less hit on the people around him, the people he’s fighting alongside, and that’s good. That’s right. It’s as simple as that: so no, he does not like to show the aches, the trembles, because he does not truly mind it, but what he does mind is the worrying, and the nagging, and then even more worrying and… it is tiring. More than his knee protesting every time he walks on it, more than having to turn his head further to see. Those are inconvenient, perhaps even dangerous, but he can live with them. His hands are large enough that his grasp does not suffer, and hey, you have ten fingers so there’s a few to spare. There’s a trick to it – you don’t show the hurt. He locks it away, keeps it hidden, and eventually, he forgets about it too, and if you don’t remember something, it doesn’t really matter if it existed in the first place. The pain seeps away again, when that happens. It always does.

He is the Iron fucking Bull and it is going to take a lot more than that to keep him down.


End file.
